


Collecting Dues

by alicat54c



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Season/Series 01, Time Travel Fix-It, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22915741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicat54c/pseuds/alicat54c
Summary: Sesshoumaru blinked. In a moment, the bloody battlefield around him was replaced by tall ornate pillars. His hand, formerly curled around the neck of a yokai, now rested on the hilt of Tesseiga, which lay before him on a cushioned dais.Tesseiga pulsed under his fingers. A sword with the power to reverse death. Evidentially it could reverse much more.A single silver brow raised. “Did you bring this Sesshoumaru back to this day, when you were first presented to him?”...Sesshoumaru is more worried about famine and taxes than weak demons hoping to get a power crutch using the Shikon Jewel.Also, why everyone in the Western court was convinced that Sesshoumaru had a grand master plan to overthrow the human kingdoms by instating half demon children as figurehead lords and vassals to him, he had no idea.In any case, InuYasha would learn the manners becoming of a member of the Western House if it killed him.
Relationships: InuYasha & Sesshoumaru (InuYasha)
Comments: 43
Kudos: 182





	Collecting Dues

…

Sesshoumaru blinked. In a moment, the bloody battlefield around him was replaced by tall ornate pillars. His hand, formerly curled around the neck of a yokai, now rested on the hilt of Tesseiga, which lay before him on a cushioned dais. 

He recognized this place, those banners declaring the Western lands and their allied generals. He also knew this place and those generals burned during the invasion of the neko yokai, decades ago. 

Sesshoumaru flexed his fingers, all ten of them. Two arms, he thought in detachment. 

Tesseiga pulsed under his fingers. A sword with the power to reverse death. Evidentially it could reverse much more. 

A single silver brow raised. “Did you bring this Sesshoumaru back to this day, when you were first presented to him?”

This day, the day of Inu Taisho’s funeral, and his gaining of his inheritance as lord of the Western lands. 

The sword pulsed again, tickling across his fingers in base joy. Sesshoumaru was too regal to sigh, though his eyes did narrow. This sword had too much personality. 

Sweeping the sword from its cushion, Sesshoumaru sheathed the blade, and tucked it into his sash. Turning, he strode out of the small ceremonial room, exiting into a much grander hall, full of bowed yokai.

Sesshoumaru remembered, vaguely, when the halls of the palace were full of inu yokai, though the memories were dulled due to being taken for granted while being experienced. 

Nostalgia almost made itself home in his mind, before being brushed away. He had no time for such things; there was work to do.

...

Before, when Sesshoumaru had first come into his inheritance as lord of the Western lands, he had left the banal administration to the court of generals and imps. As a young demon in his prime, perusing tax records behind a desk held much less interest to him than perfecting the art of killing. 

Now, though, he had years of experience patrolling the borders of his lands, and first hand experience watching what happens to kingdoms when custom and duties were not upheld. Sesshoumaru could appreciate, now, that some battles must be defeated with paper, instead of a sword.

For example, there would be a famine in fifty years. The human vassals allowed to make villages in the Western lands had starved by the hundreds. Since the yokai lords took taxes in the form of produce, many felt those lean times too. 

The Western lands had been hit worse than most. The generals had been forced to retreat with their households to different corners of the territory, not only to defend from bandits, but to be closer to what food was available. Mothers grew too thin to feed their children. Those who descended to cannibalism or to eating the humans under their care were dealt with according to the laws laid down by the Inu Taisho.

Sesshoumaru did not intend to let such a thing happen again. 

Humans were creatures of dirt, yes, but dirt grew food. Dirt was a resource. Any yokai lord who let the soil of their lands blow away with changing winds was a fool. 

So, instead of secluding himself to discover and become disappointed with the powers of Tesseiga, as he had done in his past life, Sesshoumaru took a seat in his father’s office.

He called his advisors together, dismissed more than half of them, then instructed those who remained to take a census. The practice would not become common place for another half century, but Sesshoumaru would not let the linearity of time held tradition bar him from his goals. 

It took over a decade for the scrolls to make their rounds of the Western lands, and return to his hands. In that time, Sesshoumaru set his generals to fortifying the borders of their territory, citing that some enterprising yokai might assume them weak, with the Inu Taisho so recently dead. They grumbled, and called him overly cautious, but did not outwardly rebel against his orders. Sesshoumaru’s spies among their ranks informed him that they did not inwardly rebel either, for all their grumbling.

A conglomeration of imps were put in charge of accounting and organizing the numerous offerings and taxation records. From their allies in the riverlands, a contingent of dragons came to help divert the rivers, where a lake and series of buildings would be built. Nominally, the new structures were to replace the old stables, where the steeds of visiting yokai slept. However, they could be easily converted into store house.

When the census came back, the imps were in a flurry, comparing it with the itemized tax records. One unfortunate imp, clearly having lost a bet to his fellows, presented one particular document to Sesshoumaru’s desk. The imp’s face was pressed so close to the ground, his stutter could barely be heard.

“O-one province has n-not paid tribute to the Western Lands since a decade before your honorable father’s d-death.”

Sesshoumaru contemplated the scroll, eyes half lidded. The province in question was marked out on a sketched map. Why did it look so familiar? At his side, Tesseiga hummed, agrivating the tickling memory just outside of his reach.

“This Sesshoumaru will go in person to remind these humans that their lives rely on this one’s mercy.” 

The imp scurried away on hands and knees as he stood. An inu yoki who did not leave the den would chew his holdings, as the saying went, and Sesshoumaru was due for a walk about his territory anyway.

…

This province was under the care of some human lord, who, in the reckoning of humans, was powerful and well off. The land was known for its bountiful rice and carp harvest, and for the warding which prevented lesser demons from entering the lord’s castle.

He caught a familiar scent on the air, and felt his hackles raise. 

Oh, that was why this place seemed so familiar. 

He swept into the castle, aura causing several humans stationed by the door to collapse against their spears. 

Sweeping into the lord’s presenting room in the heart of the palace, Sesshoumaru glowered at the crowd of human samuri surrounding the ostentatiously dressed figure cowering behind them.

“You will bring this Sesshoumaru to where you are keeping our younger brother.” His voice held hints of his true form’s bark, and the samuri trembled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” The lord squealed, from where his long robed arms covered his head.

“You will show this one where in this palace you are keeping him, or I will search myself, and you will no longer have a palace.”

The lord squealed like a stuck piglet, arms flapping. He screamed for a servant. “Bring the little- bring /it/ here this instant!”

The servant bowed, visibly wringing his hands and trembling, before scuttling out of the room.

Sesshoumaru waited, half masted eyes doing nothing to disguise the glowing red. The lord occasionally made more squeaking sounds, as his samuri whispered amongst themselves.

What shameful guards to protect such a pathetic lord. Demonic loyalty must be earned, and no demon would lower itself to serve such a lord as this, who didn’t even fight his own battles.

The servant returned, nearly crashing into the hall in their haste. A small figure stumbled in his wake, pulled along much faster than his short legs could carry, by a rope tied around his neck.

The figure’s red clothing, tied to the strength of his yokai, was in tatters. Dirt ground into his fur, turning the silver a dusty grey. Fleas and flies bit sores into his ears, but they barely twitched to flick the pests away. 

With Sesshoumaru’s honorable father dead thirty years, that made InuYasha barely past the age of a babe, in demonic reckoning. He looked closer to what Sesshoumaru would expect of a demon child approaching their toddling decades, though he supposed that his human blood made him age faster than a true demon.

Sesshoumaru’s gaze softened from a glower. 

Inuyasha looked so much like his former ward, Rin. 

The first time Sesshoumaru had been here, in that unlived future vision, he had still been full of rage at his father’s passing, and the dishonor he had brought upon the Western house, and upon Sesshoumaru’s mother, by taking a human mistress. 

Some demon in the court had made mention of the inu hanyou in passing. Sesshoumaru had fully intended to kill the brat and his human mother, to restore honor to his house. 

However, this same scene, though Inuyasha might have been older than he appeared now, changed his plans. 

Through the red haze of his rampage, Sesshoumaru remembered turning his back on the hanyou, and slaughtering every human in the castle. 

Inuyasha must have escaped on his own after Sesshoumaru returned to his palace, as reports of a dog eared hanyou wandering the wilds filtered to his ears. 

Sesshoumaru had never sought him out, and if Inuyasha had tried to seek an audience, his vassals turned him away. 

But that was in a past which hadn’t happened yet. Or perhaps in a vision of what wouldn’t. 

Though rampant destruction of this hateful place was looking more and more tempting.

Sesshoumaru walked forward. The samuri tensed, armor clanking. The lord squealed even louder, cowering under his sleeves. The servant stifled a scream, and ran from the room. The pup, however, did not move, not even when Sesshoumaru loomed right over him.

Sesshoumaru reached down, claws lengthening, towards the pup’s neck. He flinched back, face scrunching in preparation of a hit. Poison bubbled along the claw’s edge, so close to the fragile, too human skin. The pup began to tremble. Carefully, Sesshoumaru touched the edge of the rope, and it fell away with a corrosive hiss. The skin beneath was raw and bruised.

The demon lord’s eyes flicked back to the crowd of humans, and Sesshoumaru knew they would be completely red and glowing.

The lord squealed, unable to take the accusatory silence. “We took care of that demon my aunt birthed, you should owe us your gratitude!”

Sesshoumaru’s placid countenance remained cool. He knelt, and wrapped one arm around the pup’s middle and lifted him. Inuyasha instinctively went limp, his tense shivers abating. Adjusting his grip, so the pup was cradled in the crook of the arm he had once cut off, Sesshoumaru looked at the groveling human. 

“You claim our gratitude for your hospitality to this Sesshoumaru’s brother, and so you shall receive it in excess to what you have shown the house of the west.”

In twenty years the famine would strike, and this castle would starve. For now, Sesshoumaru turned and left.  
…

It was only logical to take the hanyou in. Left to his own devices, Inuyasha would become an embarrassment to the house of the Western lands, not to mention his infatuation with miko destabilizing the fragile balance the Shikon Jewel held in yokai society. 

Every fifty years or so, some demon would manage to discover and over power the jewel’s miko guardian. Higher yokai knew the jewel to cause madness, and did not bother with the games lower yokai played. Inu Taisho had gathered the lords of the other lands, long before Sesshoumaru was born, to discuss the jewel. Any yokai under their rule who dared pursue it would be punished. 

The famine had destabilized much, including oversight the yokai lords should have performed. That abomination of a spider demon would not have gotten away with as much as he did, had the lord of the East not starved to death inside his castle.

But that future was not to happen.

Shaking himself free of idle musings, Sesshoumaru hunted. It would take little over a day’s flight to return to the Western palace, but the pup needed immediate care. 

His skill at managing with only one hand was put to the test. The pup needed warmth, his thin human skin inadequate even against a cool night breeze, so Sesshoumaru kept him clamped to his side. He could feel soft claws kneeding at the fur draped over his shoulder, where the pup had burrowed. Gold eyes peeked out from between white strands, only to turn back self consciously when the older demon looked down. 

Sesshoumaru caught a rabbit, and, remembering Rin’s habit of preparing her food, gutted it. A flick of his yokai lit a fire of twigs, and he held the dismembered creature over the flames in his fist, until the mortal flesh seemed charred enough. 

Pulling his hand from the fire, he offered the blackened meat to the wide eyed pup. 

InuYasha blinked at the offering, head turned the tiniest fraction from where it was buried in Sesshoumaru’s fur.

“Eat,” the elder commanded. “I will not have one under my care starving.”

A tattered ear twitched, and blunted claws unclenches themselves from his fur. Yellow eyes flickered from the remains of the rabbit, to Sesshoumaru, and back again.

“Eat,” Sesshoumaru ordered again, shoving the meat into the tiny grubby paws.

The pup needed no more encouragement, sinking his milk teeth into his meal with a squeaking growl.

Sesshoumaru adjusted his grip on the pup, so he was seated on his lap, rather than cradled in the crook of his arm.

The state of his fur was disgraceful, his ears even more so. Sesshoumaru ran his claws through the worst tangles. As he worked, the pup gnawed his way through the entire rabbit carcass, and began clumsily licking the blood off his palms and fingers.

One finger brushed lightly against the pup’s damaged ears, which flinched to flatten and vanish into the mane of white fur.

The pup whined, the sound muffled from the rabbit clenched between his teeth. The inu yokai scruffed him, hand at the base of his fragile neck giving a quick shake. The pup went limp, ears now plastered to his skull. 

Sesshoumaru huffed. “Your yokai is too weak to sustain you, and your body too human to heal without it. You will stay still.”

The pup whimpered, but stopped struggling.

He traced the soft ear with his clars again, noting bruises in the shape of fingers beneath the fur. 

An image of the castle burning, and his true form bounding through walls and corpses lit in his mind. How date those humans disrespect his house in this way. 

A low growl rumbled deep in his chest, as he began to groom the pup, first scratching away dirt and scabs with his claws, then gentling the cleanly bleeding sores with a quick swipe of his tongue. 

The pup whimpered, but remained still, mindful of the grip Sesshoumaru still had on his neck. 

Eyeing his work, Sesshoumaru drew back, satisfied with the wounds, for now. Night had truly fallen, the campfire the only light, aside from the crescent moon. The pup’s eyes were heavy, small yawn being stiffled by Sesshoumaru’s fur, where he snuggled for warmth. 

“You are too fragile,” the inu yokai said, adjusting his arm to support the pup as he drifted off.  
…

Higher yokai did not require regular rest, unless they were injured. It had taken Sesshoumaru several nights to discover that keeping Rin awake for more than a day, resulted in her dozing while on the back of Ah-Un, and nearly plummeting to her death. At the moment, Sesshoumaru did not with for his brother’s death, so it was nearly sunrise before he rose from their campsite. 

The pup startled awake in his arms at the movement. His nose twitched, and he breathed a sigh as he took in Sesshoumaru’s scent, cuddling further into his brother’s fur.

“Wake. We will travel today, and this one will not carry you while we travel.” 

Golden eyes opened to peer at him between strands of white fur. Blunt claws clenched once, as if in a bid to hold on tighter, before relenting.

Setting the pup on the ground, Sesshoumaru stood to his full height. InuYasha blinked up at him, head tilted back nearly level with his shoulders.

Pups this small should be with their mothers. Though, Sesshoumaru supposed InuYasha’s mother to be long dead. It had been over thirty years. The childhood of even a hanyou lasted longer than most human lifetimes, which is why most died before reaching adulthood.

He met his little brother’s gaze placidly. “You will call me Sesshoumaru-sama.”

InuYasha blinked up at him.

Sesshoumaru’s eyes narrowed slightly. “InuYasha, you will respond when this one speaks to you. You will say ‘Yes, Sesshoumaru-sama.’ “

Silver ears flattened. “Y-yes Sess-ama.”

Sesshoumaru leaned closer and raised a finger. The pup went nearly cross eyed trying to follow it. 

“InuYasha.” The pup’s gaze refocused on him, brows furrowed in an annoyed pout. “Stand up straight, you are a scion of the house of the Western lands. Say, ‘Yes Se-sso-ma-ru-sa-ma’.”

“Sesmaru-sama.” His tongue limped between fangs too large for a human’s muzzle, as if he were allowing his true form to leak through the illusion of humanity. 

Sesshoumaru frowned at the inelegant construction. What an unwieldy body to have, with canid features plastered onto an ill suited human frame, and no means of changing form fully one way or the other. InuYasha was lucky their father was so powerful. Weaker yokai, who had trouble maintaining a transformation, tended to produce hanyou whose bodies were too malformed to survive outside of the womb.

It did not matter. Sesshoumaru would impress decorum on his brother, even through his physical deficiencies. 

He flicked the pup’s nose, prompting a high yap and a scowl.

“Sesshoumaru-sama,” he repeated again, stressing each syllable.

InuYasha rubbed at his nose, eyebrows looking utterly betrayed.

Sesshoumaru raised his own, unimpressed. “We will not leave until you speak this one’s name properly. I will not have you disgrace our family.” He leaned further, meeting his brother’s eyes. “Speak properly, or this one will not have time to feed you before we must leave.”

The pout canted to determination, and tiny shoulders squared in mimicry of his brother’s easy straight backed posture. “Yes, Sesshoumaru-sama!”

Sesshoumaru tilted his head slightly. “Good.”

The hanyou beamed at him, lips pulled back to expose his many teeth. 

Sesshoumaru’s hackles instinctually raised at the show of aggression, and he fought the urge to bare his own teeth and snap at the uppity pup’s throat. 

Humans seemed to lack the instinctual knowledge that their gestures evoked. Rin would often run to his side baring flowers, teeth bared. Only because he did not recognize her challenges as a threat, did he refrain from scolding her. It was much later that he learned that a baring of teeth on a human was the equivalent of an enthusiastic tail wag. What inefficient creatures they were, to use a sign of aggression to make up for the lack of a fifth limb.

Yet another human gesture he would have to train away, if his brother planned to survive at court.

He flicked the pup’s nose again, and the smile was doused under a squeak of annoyance.

“Do not show your teeth unless you plan to use them.” He straightened. “Now come, if you wish to eat.”  
…

The sun was midway through the sky, and Sesshoumaru sincerely missed Ah-Un. The two headed dragon was ever useful for carrying Rin and Jakken across the landscape after him. Sesshoumaru’s usual mode of transport, a cloud of caustic yokai under his feel allowing him to fly, was not useful for transporting passengers. They had a tendency to melt when exposed to the purest form of his poison. 

He would have to settle for camp again, as the Western castle was more than a day’s walk, and InuYasha’s human constitution would not let him march through the night without rest.

So inconvenient.

Breakfast had been a trial, as Sesshoumaru refused to hunt for InuYasha again. The pup was on his feet, and his ears no longer were scabbed, after a harty meal and restful night’s sleep surrounded by pack. He was an inu yokai. He needed to hunt for himself.

Which led Sesshoumaru to criticize every twig cracking step and panting breath the pup let out. Sesshoumaru had to point out the scent trail of a rabbit, as the pup’s nose seemed woefully inadequate for the job.

When the beast had been found, InuYasha had darted after it with an exciteable bark, alerting the rabbit to the predator, causing it to dart into thorn filled brush. Sesshoumaru watched, eyes half lidded in judgement, as the pup squirmed himself further into the thicket, hopelessly tangled.

A branch broke, sending the pup plummeting into the leafy depths. There was a scrabble, a bark, a growl, and InuYasha tumbled out of the thicket with a kicking rabbit clutched between his blunt claws.

Sesshoumaru watched the struggle, as the rabbit, nearly as big as the pup, scratched, eyes wild. InuYasha snapped ineffectually, milk teeth bared.

The older yokai reached out, and snapped the rabbit’s neck cleanly. “Next time you will do this,” he lectured, as wide yellow eyes blinked up at him. “Another should never have to take your kill.”

InuYasha nodded, brows furrowed in concentration. He looked back down at the rabbit, seemingly at a loss for what to do now that he had caught it.

Sesshoumaru took it from his hands. “Watch,” he ordered. “You prefer your food the human way, so you must do it yourself. No one will do this for you again.”

He skinned the rabbit with a swipe of his claws, before handing the bleeding carcass over to the pup. “Hold it over the fire until you want to eat it.”

The coals from the night before were still hot under the ashes. InuYasha tried to hold the carcass over them. But the heat proved too much for his thin skin, and he dropped it into the ashes. 

He whimpered, sucking on his fingers, reddened from more than fresh blood. Sesshoumaru watched, vaguely curious. The pup glanced at him, before his gaze darted away to the forest floor. He picked up a stick, and prodded at the ashy meal. The carcass turned over, showing the side that had been in contact with the coals to be cooked black.

InuYasha ended up eating a mostly bloody, very dirty, mangled rabbit, but he didn’t seem to mind. Based on his gurgling growls, he seemed quite pleased with the prize.

Unfortunately, his fur was reduced to a twig matted tangle once more.

Sesshoumaru settled behind him. “You must learn decorum,” he snapped, combing his claws over the younger’s hair. 

The pup ducked his head, claws scratching at the blood smears on his face.

“Stop that,” Sesshoumaru caught a tiny wrist, before the attached hand could puncture an eye. If his skin was fragile, his eyes must be even more so. Human weakness was monumental to even overcome the constitution of a yokai.

The pup rubbed at his eye again, this time more mindful of his claws. “Hurts,” he mumbled. 

Sesshoumaru caught the pup’s chin, and turned his face upwards. His right eye was red and inflamed from the pup’s scratching, and his mouth was still covered in rabbit’s blood.

The yokai lord did not sigh. Such a show of emotion was unbecoming.

With the hanyou’s life strung along so tenuously at the hands of the humans, his demon blood must be raging with instincts to rip his way free of their hands. However, the seal in his eye, the pearl which contained his father’s bones and the sword Tessaiga, prevented it. 

What a cruel curse of protection, that a power meant to keep away the madness of his yokai blood would make him too human to defend himself. 

Every pup had the instinct to bite when threatened, to change from two legs to four to better fight. How must it feel for the soul of a yokai to twist against the limbs of a human. No wonder madness would follow. 

Sesshoumaru caught InuYasha’s other fist, before it could scratch again at his inflamed eye. “You are too fragile,” he said, and began to scrub the blood off the pup’s face.  
...

**Author's Note:**

> ...  
> Yr 0-30
> 
> InuYasha  
> 30 ~3yrs old


End file.
